Buyer Intent Data
Article | June 20, 2023
Third-party cookie restrictions or outright bans were an inevitable step in the evolution of data protection. As a result, B2B marketers are preparing for a cookie-less future in which third-party data will no longer direct them to potential clients. They must now prepare new tactics to execute account-based marketing (ABM) strategies.
Abhi Yadav, the founder of Zylotech, states that ABM strategies greatly depend on trustworthy data: “We believe the foundation for any successful ABM program lies in the ability to “trust” your data. This requires scalable, repeatable processes for data management and governance across all people, accounts, and activities.”
Abhi Yadav, the founder of Zylotech, states that ABM strategies greatly depend on trustworthy data: “We believe the foundation for any successful ABM program lies in the ability to “trust” your data. This requires scalable, repeatable processes for data management and governance across all people, accounts, and activities.”
In light of the demise of third-party cookies, where can B2B marketers turn for reliable information? Let us find out.
First-Party Cookies
When it comes to potential customers, first-party cookies are the most dependable source of information. These cookies assist in monitoring audience behavior when they visit our websites and engage with our content. Based on recent interactions, first-party cookie data will produce more relevant content.
Data Points
When developing ABM strategies, delve deeper into first-party data and use locations and keywords. B2B marketers can then contextualize the content and figure out what prompted the viewer to interact with it in the first place.
Tracking Technologies
Tracking technologies like reverse IP tracking are legal and can aid your ABM campaigns. This technology enables businesses to conduct reverse IP searches and access the top-level domain data that IP produces. The name of the business hosting that IP and the other details of those who registered the business IP can be accessed. Using this information, B2B marketers can develop an effective target list and pursue the target accounts with personalized content.
Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising displays advertisements to website visitors based on the content they are currently viewing. As a result, the visitors find these ads relevant to their needs and are more receptive to them.
ABM Success Requires Reliable Data
Using primary data sources will provide direct feedback on the relevance of your content based on interactions with potential clients. As we enter this first-party world, you must remain agile, with new ABM tactics ready to guide clients toward successful partnerships.
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Account Based Data
Article | August 19, 2022
Account-based marketing brings in a higher ROI compared to other marketing activities. It targets key accounts, but not always at the right time. The buyer experience gets compromised if the strategy does not align with the account’s buyer journey.
Demandbase CMO John Miller paints an interesting picture of what ABM is.
“The analogy that I've always used to describe ABM was fishing with spears, which was an effective analogy. But at the same time, it doesn't feel very good to get poked by a spear.”
-Demandbase CMO John Miller
If ABM pokes accounts without respecting them or creating an emotional connection with them, customer success cannot be guaranteed. This is where ABX comes in. It’s a GTM strategy that puts the value of customer experience above the value of key accounts.
ABM ››› ABX: Why Are B2B Marketers Adopting ABX?
B2B marketers clearly understand how effective the ABX strategy is compared to good old ABM.
Here are the reasons why:
Buyer groups are the stars of the show.
AI insights provide accurate information on which accounts exhibit buyer intent and what they are looking for. These accounts are engaged through hyper-personalized campaigns only when they are in the buying phase.
Marketing, sales, and customer success teams ensure every touchpoint consistently delivers value to the customer.
ABX execution involves being agile enough to adapt to the ever-changing behavior and needs of the customer.
Every customer is nurtured to deepen loyalty for a long-term business relationship.
Why Does ABX Matter?
Upgrading your plain old ABM strategy to an ABX strategy simply means applying customer experience best practices to your marketing processes. Consequently, your campaigns are trustworthy, impactful, empathetic, and relevant to every stage of your customer’s journey. Targeted messaging that appeals to every member of the customer’s buying team influences the buying decision of the account. The strategy brings sales, marketing, SDR, and customer-facing teams together so they work towards creating a wholesome customer experience consistently across all the touchpoints.
Conclusion
In a world where there is a continuous influx of information and a scarcity of attention, any kind of interruptive marketing may be ineffective and off-putting. Companies should focus on ABX to build trust with key accounts and create engagement that isn’t forced through perfectly orchestrated interactions across a project or management lifecycle.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | March 6, 2023
Over the last couple years, there has been a paradigm shift in the way customers engage with brands. The effect of this shift has also trickled down to the B2B domain. The marketing strategies that drove sales and revenue pre-COVID no longer work. In response, brands are focusing on revolutionizing their marketing strategies by implementing ABM to optimize their processes and drive a higher ROI. Today, 67% of brands leverage account-based marketing.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is the answer to B2B marketers’ struggles as they navigate through the volatile business situation that the pandemic has created. It uses content personalization, focused targeting of high-value accounts, and aligns the marketing strategy with business goals. Through multiple platforms, brand awareness, and optimized processes, ABM gives a higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.
In an interview with Media 7, Mark Emond, Founder and President of Demand Spring, talked about B2B marketing strategies, content, and technology stacks.
“In today’s long B2B buying journey, buyers are in control and they are interacting across multiple channels. The key is to use data and technology to serve up highly targeted content across channels, tuned to the stage of the buyer’s journey a prospect is in, and what their behavior shows they are most apt to engage in.”
The following five emerging trends in account-based marketing have defined ABM in 2021 and may influence the way it evolves in 2022:
Data Integration
Manually researching target account data requires resources and time. To overcome this challenge, businesses use integrated marketing automation and CRM to collect firmographic data (company size and location), technographic data (target company’s technological choices), behavioral and intent data, predictive analytics, and more to optimize their ABM campaigns.
Marketing automation and CRM keep track of this integration so that brands can segment their prospects effectively. With the help of this integration, they can also find accounts similar to their target accounts. Breaking down internal info silos for cross-departmental collaboration promotes using the valuable customer intelligence that departments have. For example, the product management department can share the customization preferences of the clients they work with. This information can help marketers offer clients just what they want. Data integration helps steer ABM campaigns in the right direction.
New Tools
A wide array of tools to simplify and optimize account-based marketing are available on the market. These tools are used for CRM and marketing automation, intent monitoring, campaign execution, orchestration, measuring and reporting the performance of the ABM campaign, and content syndication. These tools are a part of the martech stack that brands use to find key accounts closest to their ideal customer profile (ICP). They facilitate better resource allocation so that personnel can spend more time on personalized interactions with the target accounts.
B2B businesses prefer using marketing automation platforms that they can customize to fit their needs, like sending email marketing (behavior based email), CRM and sales automation, campaign tracking, account-based digital marketing, and analyzing the performance of their ABM campaign, instead of creating a martech stack from scratch. They choose software that can have numerous integrations, products, and services to better adapt to changing circumstances.
Omnichannel Presence
Omnichannel presence is one of the most influential emerging trends in account-based marketing. Brands need to be present and relevant in the lives of their customers. They do this by using different channels for communication and engagement so that their relationship is deep and meaningful, focusing on understanding their problems and offering effective solutions.
A 2019 study by Gartner found that B2B buyers only spent 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. In the current pandemic situation, in-person events and meetings are replaced by AI-powered chat bots, behavior-based emails, personalized website content, and account-based digital advertising so that customers receive a steady flow of information from businesses across different channels. Marketing automation streamlines this omnichannel communication in ABM. However, it can also complicate things for buyers because of the barrage of information they receive. The Gartner study found that 77% of B2B customers found their purchase journey difficult. Striking a careful balance is necessary while integrating new channels into your strategy.
Customized Content
According to a 2020 ABM Benchmark Survey Report, 42% of respondents are personalising their content to increase account engagement and build long-term relationships. Businesses are creating tailored content for specific industries, roles, titles, challenges, and needs. Their content strategy is based on mapping content to suit a specific buyer persona. They engage the buyer at every stage. As one of the most important emerging trends in account-based marketing, customized content is making a huge difference in lead generation, conversion, and retargeting accounts.
The latest tools allow B2B marketers to personalize content based on target accounts’ interests and preferences. Selecting an appropriate content format, topics of interest, and the response to the use of respected industry influencers are mapped to create hyper-personalized content to better connect with prospects, especially decision-makers. Using marketing automation can modernize this process and deliver extraordinary results in terms of conversions and lead nurturing.
Account Metrics
Assessing the performance of an ABM campaign is of paramount importance if marketers want to meet their ROI expectations. To keep up with the emerging trends in marketing and analyze campaign performance, B2B marketers are focusing on account-centric metrics. Generated revenue and the number of accounts gained and retained are mapped using metric tools. Marketers also focus on KPIs like win rate, pipeline velocity, pipeline contribution, and account engagement score to measure the success of their ABM campaigns. As account-based marketing is evolving, it is crucial to map campaign performance so any weaknesses can be taken care of and the campaign can be optimized for better results.
Connecting siloed data sets across the entire content strategy becomes easy because of these ABM-specific metrics. These metrics gather valuable information that impacts purchase decisions as prospects move through the sales and marketing cycle.
How Snapchat’s Bitmoji Brings Traffic to Its Discover Page
Snapchat’s Bitmoji app was launched in 2016 so that users could create their own personalized cartoon avatars. Every user’s Bitmoji appears on the Discover page, where advertisements and brand content are also displayed. This way, traffic comes to the Discover page for Bitmoji but ends up being exposed to brand content and advertisements. This is a great illustration of how personalized content can drive traffic.
Conclusion
B2B marketers are keeping up with the changing and emerging trends in account-based marketing to get the most out of their campaigns. In 2022, ABM is expected to flourish and optimize the demand generation and conversion process.
FAQ
What is the future of ABM?
ABM is expected to become robust with the use of technology like marketing automation to enhance the customer experience.
Why should businesses use account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing motivates marketing and sales teams to work together, identify target accounts, craft campaigns, and align individual accounts through the pipeline.
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Targeted Account Strategy
Article | February 10, 2022
Introduction: Account-based Marketing and ABM Tactics
B2B account-based marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on targeted campaigns for high-value accounts. An account-based marketing strategy involves identifying target accounts, reaching out to them using hyper-personalized content, and engaging them in the right way and at the right time, irrespective of their position in the sales funnel. Closing the deal through an alignment between sales and marketing is the ultimate goal of an effective account-based marketing campaign. By using certain ABM tactics, you can enhance your campaign. Let us first understand what account-based marketing is, what challenges it can help you scale, and how it can help you get a higher ROI compared to any other marketing strategy that exists today.
Why Should You Implement Account-based Marketing?
According to ITSMA, 87 percent of marketers say that ABM marketing outperforms other marketing investments. B2B account-based marketing gets better results year-over-year after its implementation. With changing times, B2B customer expectations have changed. A more humane marketing strategy, customized content, the right channels, and a smooth customer experience are some of them. Not only does ABM targeting offer solutions to customers’ specific challenges, but it also converts leads with buyer intent into customers. Here are some of the challenges that an effective account-based marketing strategy will help you overcome:
Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams
The account-based marketing process involves streamlining the goals, objectives, and metrics of your sales and marketing teams. This eliminates the possibility of poor communication. Instead, there is a group effort to go after the right people to get a better return on investment.
These teams centrally view the targeted accounts through your CRM. This breaks the silos and boosts the impact of your ABM tactics. It allows unobstructed data sharing between marketing and sales. The account-based marketing process solely functions using centralized data and empowers both teams to make the most of the intent data and predict when and how to engage with the stakeholders of the target accounts.
Effective Content Personalization
As a central metric, customer experience is of paramount importance to creating lasting associations with target accounts. Most customers know what they want and need, are aware of the market conditions, and seek solutions that work best for them. They want these solutions to be offered to them on a platter through predictive customer experience. ABM scores a homerun in this aspect. It connects customers with content personalization characterized by distinct messaging speaking about challenges and solutions. Content is important to the success of an account-based marketing campaign right from the start.
Achieving Complete Data Utilization
B2B account-based marketing is a data-driven marketing technology that drives success for your business. Data is used to predict the needs of target accounts, understand their pain points, and preferred channels of communication. Clean intent data helps in increasing brand awareness among target accounts, streamlines the buying cycle, and assists marketing in creating content and messaging that best represents your brand and sharing it with sales teams so that they can use it to convert leads. Feedback data can also help marketing to access the success of the account-based marketing campaign and improve it to get better results in the future.
Maintaining Long-term Relationships with Customers
No matter the kind of B2B marketing strategy (ABM Lite, Strategic ABM, or Programmatic ABM) you choose to apply, its personalized approach boosts confidence and trust in buyers because they experience a stellar customer experience. Through customized content and focused service offerings, lasting long-term relationships with target accounts can become a reality. It also creates new opportunities for businesses.
Marketing Budgeting
An account-based marketing program enhances marketing budgets by improving customer retention and makes it easier to track ROI. It also improves your brand awareness, engagement, and lead quality metrics, so you can allocate your resources better.
Now that the benefits of account-based marketing are evident, let us now look at ABM tactics to further enhance your B2B account-based marketing strategy.
ABM Tactics to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy
Before you start using any tips and tricks to optimize your account-based marketing program, you should set your expectations and finalize the KPIs you intend to use to measure the success of your B2B ABM marketing tactics.
Let us explore some ABM tactics that can optimize your account-based marketing program:
Optimize Your ABM Funnel
Optimizing your ABM funnel may be one of the most effective account-based marketing tactics that can help you achieve growth.
Target Accounts
Optimize your target accounts using the following ways:
Content Auditing
Audit your content and verify if it caters effectively to your target accounts’ personas and the industry they belong to. Stringently review every content piece you have to ensure it is hyper-personalized and addresses the target accounts’ needs and pain points. Sometimes, your content may help you tighten your target account list.
Use Intent Data Wisely
ABM targeting should be dynamic. Update your target account list based on the intent data you receive from CRM and other platforms. You must know what your target accounts are searching for. Is it something about your business, your product, or the solutions you offer? You should always use this data to enhance your list.
Approach Different Segments
Simultaneously run multiple account-based marketing campaigns with different levels of personalization and investment. Choose from ABM Lite (one-to-few accounts), Programmatic ABM (one-to-many accounts), or Strategic ABM (one-to-one) based on your ABM targeting goals.
Engaged Accounts
Optimizing engaged accounts can be difficult because no two engaged accounts can be in the same stage of the sales funnel. Checking on how your ads are performing through click rates, organic visits on your website, email click through rates, or any other digital interaction with your brand can be a good start. Your ads should be informative yet beautiful. Improve on your copy and tighten your target account list so you reach out only to the accounts that are engaging with your content. Go all out through social media, emails, and all other channels available on the internet to reach out to engaged accounts. These account-based marketing tactics ensure that you take advantage of target account engagement enthusiastically through all channels.
New Opportunities
Help your sales team to enhance the rate of new opportunities through lead generation strategies created by ad retargeting so they can tap into the accounts that have interacted with your ads previously with renewed vigour. Creating an account engagement model to define an ‘engaged account’ in collaboration with your sales team can smoothen out the process of controlling the number of accounts it has to work on.
Outreach
Focus on creating or warming up existing relationships with the employees of your target account stakeholders. Use direct mail or personal meetings to get in touch with your target accounts. This opens the doors to new pipeline opportunities. One-to-one C-level campaigns, phone calls, and demos can be used to reach more people, warm up leads, and create brand awareness.
Improve Sales Velocity
Sales velocity is the average time taken from when an opportunity is created to when it is converted into a customer. Treat every opportunity that comes your way with the same dedication that you show to your target accounts. This approach is applicable to all the lead generation strategies you execute. Opportunities may make their way through your ABM platform or through inbound channels. Once they make their way through the funnel, make it a point to shift from awareness to ROI campaigns by exhibiting customer success stories and testimonials. These efforts can lead to a shortened sales cycle.
Harness Social Media
For the success of your B2B marketing strategy, using social media can be an effective way to capture important target accounts’ behavioral data. Follow their company accounts, stakeholder accounts, and employee accounts to remain updated. Understanding stakeholders’ and employees’ social media behaviour, likes, and engagement can help you narrow down your target account list. Strategically calling out the target accounts on social media through mentions can work in your favour.
Use Paid Advertising & Content Marketing
LinkedIn targeting, paid Google ads, industry-specific blogging along with problem and solution-oriented content can create target account engagement. Consider using account-based marketing services to market your content better and more accurately.
Marketing Automation
Artificial intelligence (AI) based marketing can optimize your account-based program by providing you with predictive insights and enhancing your communication efforts. Email campaigns can be executed using marketing automation to offer measurable account engagement. AI and big data rely on CRM data to gather user information from different platforms. This information can help you personalize your content better. Account-based marketing services offer these options to execute targeted marketing campaigns at scale.
According to a MarketingProfs survey, companies that used this ABM tactic saw 59 percent increase in closing rates.
Implement Influencer Marketing
Harness the influence of industry experts, thought leaders, and recognized contributors that your target accounts consider authentic. It can improve your conversion rate. By humanizing the buyer experience through an influencer, you can win over the trust of your accounts, encourage brand advocacy, attract new audiences, and increase the authority of the content you share. This tactic adds value to your B2B marketing strategy.
Test, Measure, Improve
Periodically testing your ad copy, content, design, and channel elements to see what works and what doesn’t is crucial to improving B2B account-based marketing. Tracking important KPIs that measure the success of your strategy can help you make it more effective. Avoid being constrained and try new things boldly. If something doesn’t work, find other ways to achieve your goals instead of scrapping the strategy. Account-based marketing tactics will only work if you analyze how they affect your strategy and accordingly keep improving its execution.
In an interview with Media 7, Daniel Englebretson, the founder of Khronos, talked about how to improve an account-based marketing strategy.
“The best programs, and the best marketers, have built their success on the back of rapid iteration and a long history of testing, learning, and continuously improving.”
Northrop Grumman Won a $2 Billion Contract by Leveraging Account-based Marketing
Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company headquartered in Virginia, clinched a ten-year, $2 billion contract with VITA. Their B2B ABM marketing tactics included using marketing and business development teams that worked closely to understand VITA’s issues, needs, and priorities. They used all this information to create a focused branding campaign to target the key decision makers at VITA. They ensured that every interaction they had with VITA reinforced their IT expertise.
The Takeaway
These ABM tactics are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing your account-based marketing program. Confidence, attentiveness, and patience are key to achieving expected conversions from an ABM strategy.
FAQ
What are the types of ABM marketing?
Programmatic ABM (one-to-many approach), ABM Lite (one-to-few approach) and Strategic ABM (one-to-one approach) are the three types of ABM marketing.
Why is account-based marketing more effective than traditional B2B marketing?
Account-based marketing targets accounts with buyer intent. It increases the conversion rate and customer experience through content personalization and a close understanding of key accounts’ needs and challenges. This focused approach leads to a higher ROI.
What are the benefits of using account-based marketing software?
An account-based marketing software powered by AI can help you reach, engage, and convert target accounts and provide you with actionable data through your websites, CRM, and marketing automation platforms. It helps you grow your business quickly and efficiently.
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